Spec me a... diesel

Group 16 insurance for the Bora. I'm over 30 with full NCB and couldn't afford that!

Why do you have an R32 in your sig if you cant afford to insure a group 16 car? You realise insurance doesnt differ much between any of the groups aged 30 right?
 
If I can get ~£1200 quotes for group 16 etc cars (done with age as 20, and no NCB), I don't understand how anyone in their 20s says they can't insure a high group car :s
tpft quotes admittingly, but still...
 
Why do you have an R32 in your sig if you cant afford to insure a group 16 car? You realise insurance doesnt differ much between any of the groups aged 30 right?

Sig is years old, never got around to updating it!

Sample insurance quotes for me:
306 DT - £310
My car (Fabia vRS) - £350
Bora TDI 130 - £380
Bora V5 - £571
Toledo V5 - £510
Golf R32 - £1012 !!!
 
Sig is years old, never got around to updating it!

Sample insurance quotes for me:

Bora TDI 130 - £380
Toledo V5 - £510

So a difference of £130. You drive a £10k car.

£130 is not a big deal on the annual cost of insurance. So it was inaccurate to say you couldnt insure a Group 16 car.
 
I was looking at the 306/Xsara HDi for a number of reasons.

1) My Astra cost a fortune to run, not on parts, just on running it. It was only a 2.0 16v but it drank petrol. This does not help when trying to save for a house.

2) Anything above 306/Focus/Golf etc size would be pointless, i don't need a huge car.

3) The 306 is about the only car i look at and don't see room for improvement, i like it as it is, no need for fancy wheels, exhausts etc etc, i can drive it as it is and be happy with it :)

4) Its cheap to insure, IG5 is ideal for me whilst my current claims against me dissapear.

So if you can suggest to me a mid sized car thats going to be cheap to run, insure and that i won't want to change, please suggest me some :D

then the 306/xsara sounds perfect for you.

your always going to get the executive car brigade coming in suggesting all the usual carp, but at the end of the day it wont be cheap motoring, which is what your after it seems.
 
[TW]Fox;10720578 said:
So a difference of £130. You drive a £10k car.

£130 is not a big deal on the annual cost of insurance. So it was inaccurate to say you couldnt insure a Group 16 car.

My point was ....

To quote Jez :

You realise insurance doesnt differ much between any of the groups aged 30 right?

I'm over 30 with full NCB (8 years) and no convictions. Car is garaged. I'd be impressed if the OP could get anywhere near that.

At the moment I couldn't afford an annual premium over £500 and be able to pay my mortgage. Hence why I have a cheap to run Fabia vRS. Costs very little to run compared to most hot hatches and gives me a grin when I drive it.
 
At the moment I couldn't afford an annual premium over £500 and be able to pay my mortgage. Hence why I have a cheap to run Fabia vRS. Costs very little to run compared to most hot hatches and gives me a grin when I drive it.

I dont understand how you can on the one side say you just couldnt afford more than £500 a year for insurance or you wouldnt be able to pay your mortgage yet then manage to find £10,000 to buy a nearly new Skoda? It doesnt make sense.

The Fabia costs less to run than most hot hatches becuase it's a diesel supermini and not a hot hatch. You could have had a proper hot hatch AND 3 years insurance for less than the cost of the Fabia, however..

£1k for an R32 with full NCB sounds very expensive. My 5 Series is the same group as an R32, and I pay only £170 more than that. I'm nearly a decade younger, have a claim, and no NCB.
 
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but at the end of the day it wont be cheap motoring

He's doing less than 5k a year. The difference between 20mpg and 35mpg is going to be the cost of a few takeaway pizzas every month. Thats it.

Why pay the premium to own a diesel when the savings won't offset this cost for many years?
 
At the moment I couldn't afford an annual premium over £500 and be able to pay my mortgage. Hence why I have a cheap to run Fabia vRS. Costs very little to run compared to most hot hatches and gives me a grin when I drive it.

:eek: Are things really that tight?! I hope you're on a fixed rate deal for a loooong time!
 
I was looking at the 306/Xsara HDi for a number of reasons.

1) My Astra cost a fortune to run, not on parts, just on running it. It was only a 2.0 16v but it drank petrol. This does not help when trying to save for a house.

2) Anything above 306/Focus/Golf etc size would be pointless, i don't need a huge car.

3) The 306 is about the only car i look at and don't see room for improvement, i like it as it is, no need for fancy wheels, exhausts etc etc, i can drive it as it is and be happy with it :)

4) Its cheap to insure, IG5 is ideal for me whilst my current claims against me dissapear.

So if you can suggest to me a mid sized car thats going to be cheap to run, insure and that i won't want to change, please suggest me some :D

I can happily recommend the Pug 306TD, small, cheap to run and insure, it's a diesel, so it's smooth to drive (non of this million revs lark) and it's fun to drive. But you'll be told it's rubbish as it doesn't have 200bhp and do 20mpg ;)
 
[TW]Fox;10720740 said:
He's doing less than 5k a year. The difference between 20mpg and 35mpg is going to be the cost of a few takeaway pizzas every month. Thats it.

Why pay the premium to own a diesel when the savings won't offset this cost for many years?

but that would require people to think logically ;) which doesnt happen.

aye theres an extra premium for diesels in the first place, but with the extra premium comes the lesser depreciation, which has to also be considered.

the xsara/306 diesel fulfils all his criteria. surely thats enough? yes he could get a far better petrol for the money, but it would fall far outside his initial criteria and therefore defeats the object?
 
[TW]Fox;10720727 said:
£1k for an R32 with full NCB sounds very expensive. My 5 Series is the same group as an R32, and I pay only £170 more than that. I'm nearly a decade younger, have a claim, and no NCB.

Fox, you'll be surprised - history shows that the popular VW is of the time has a high loading as far as insurers are concerned. My mk2 g60 was always a few hundred quid more to insure than equivalent or higher group cars.

I've started looking at a replacement car and insurance for a MKIV R32 is more than a 330i coupe, A6 biturbo, MK5 Gti or A4 2.0T or 3.0, it;s actually not much less than an E46 M3 :eek:

The R is still suffering from it's reputation when it was launched, lots got stolen by forced entry to homes to gain keys - so usually total loss.

How else do you now see shoddy early mk4 1.6 golfs with full R32 bodykit & interior (worth more than the damn car!!)

However overall I agree with the petrol advocates, you really don't need one unless you're doing 20k miles a year otherwise it's actually cost you more money to run a diesel. Yes they sell for more than the equivalent petrol, but when you sell it the difference is much less than when you bought it due to depreciation.
Get a nice petrol car, the XE's were quite thirsty compared to more modern stuff, I get an average of about 31 mpg from a 1.8T passat (the golf gave about 20 when std and low teens once fettled) and couldn't justify buying a diesel as I would have needed 7 years to recoup the extra cost over the petrol car!!
 
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But the point is that his initial criteria is based on the misconception that a diesel car is bulletproof and will last for ever and that a petrol car will not.

If his criteria were based on solid reasoning, sure. But they are not. There are things he has not considered :)
 
[TW]Fox;10720727 said:
I dont understand how you can on the one side say you just couldnt afford more than £500 a year for insurance or you wouldnt be able to pay your mortgage yet then manage to find £10,000 to buy a nearly new Skoda? It doesnt make sense.

The Fabia costs less to run than most hot hatches becuase it's a diesel supermini and not a hot hatch. You could have had a proper hot hatch AND 3 years insurance for less than the cost of the Fabia, however..

£1k for an R32 with full NCB sounds very expensive. My 5 Series is the same group as an R32, and I pay only £170 more than that. I'm nearly a decade younger, have a claim, and no NCB.

This is going slightly OT, so I'll apologise now.

I'm not even going to entertain the petrol vs diesel or the hot hatch debate. It's on the Top Gear hot hatch list and hits 60 in 8 seconds. It was my choice of car so deal with it. I'd dearly love a MkIV R32 or a 530i but it's not realistic.

The Skoda was bought back in 2005 when I had just moved back in with the parents. I wanted something well built with a grin factor that would be cheap to run. I was looking at moving out when the market settled down, so the car was a long term bet to last me 6+ years with sensible running costs.

Decided on the Fabia vRS. Early one's were late 2003 and were fetching 11-11.5k at the time with 18 months use and 30k on the clock. A shiny brand new facelift one was less than a grand more so I ordered and paid in cash. The only costs I'm liable for over the first three years are tax, servicing, insurance. Work mileage covers the other variable costs.

That's why.
 
We'll have to agree to disagree becuase I simply cannot entertain the concept that somebody can apparently be at a situation where £130 a year more insurance means they can't afford a mortgage BUT also able to drive a brand new car they paid cash for. You could quite easily have spent half the money on a Bora 2.3 or whatever and had £6000-£7000 in the bank for insurance or - perhaps - mortgage repayments.

We'll agree to disagree on the hot hatch front as well. A hot hatch is a lot of things, but a 130bhp diesel Fabia is not a hot hatch. Irrespective of what Top Gear chart its on. And 0-60 in 8 seconds?

Anyway, none of this really helps Phil :p
 
However overall I agree with the petrol advocates, you really don't need one unless you're doing 20k miles a year ........

........ couldn't justify buying a diesel as I would have needed 7 years to recoup the extra cost over the petrol car!!

I'm probably missing something here, but people don't just buy diesels for fuel economy, they buy them because they like the performance, the constant torque, the ease of driving.
 
[TW]Fox;10720954 said:
You could quite easily have spent half the money on a Bora 2.3 or whatever and had £6000-£7000 in the bank for insurance or - perhaps - mortgage repayments.

Been there already - ran a 1.6 Bora from 2000-2005. After 50k in the final 2 years it needed £800 in maintenance. So for the reasons above it had to go.

It's costing me under £60 a month for the fixed costs (tax, insurance and servicing) on the Fabia. A bargaintastic depreciated repmobile would cost less upfront, but would it consistently cost that much to run a month and start every morning for 3+ years?

We'll agree to disagree.
 
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